Why is it that when life gets chaotic and even the idea of spare time is a joke, that’s when all the creative ideas come pouring out? It’s never on a lazy Saturday afternoon when the kids are napping, or one of those rare (exceedingly rare, actually) days when someone else is watching them and I have the day to myself. Nope…it’s when I’m stuck at my desk at work, wading through a sea of emails and desperately plowing through my “to-do” list…that’s when inspiration strikes. Or when I’m sitting at a stoplight in the car with the music on full blast, and I hear some song lyric that strikes a chord and turns on the lightbulb above my head. It’s when I have my little sketchbook in my purse but can’t a single pen. Or pencil. Or highlighter. Or crayon. Ideas just LOVE to pop us when I have no time to actually execute them.

Life has been slightly insane over the last few months. Between looking for a new house, packing everything to move, sick kids, sick babysitters, crazy work…I’ve barely had time to breathe. Yet, oddly enough, I’ve been bombarded by idea after idea for art projects. Maybe my brain is so frazzled and overstimulated that it’s just gone into overdrive and started firing off ideas like crazy. I’ve filled the little sketchbook in my purse with 30 second scribbles I HAD to get out between emails at work. I have a list of words and phrases scratched out in a notebook that I’m just SURE have the potential to turn into something. There’s that fear that if I don’t get the seeds of these ideas OUT and physically recorded somehow, that I might forget about them and I’ll lose them forever.

I’ve redesigned my website in my head but haven’t had time to pick up my Dreamweaver book to refresh my memory and really dig into the project. I painted over a half-baked canvas on my easel that just wasn’t working out and sketched out the framework of my newest idea over it. I started a new marker piece, thinking it would be easier for me to work at that for minutes at a time (because sometimes that’s all I get) than working on a painting with all the messy supplies involved.

What gives? In a way this rush of creativity is awesome, and in a way it seems horribly unfair. I just want to get these ideas OUT, bring them to fruition, and get at lease ONE completed piece out of this whirlwind of creativity. But so far, I haven’t. And I almost feel like I need to build myself an arsenal of ideas to come back to later, for when I do actually have time (ha!) but I’m feeling somewhat uninspired. Because I guarantee, as soon as I have the time again, this gush of ideas is going to slow down to a trickle.

All I want is a day to lock myself in a room and paint for ten or twelve hours, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon. So I guess the best I can hope for is for those ideas to just keep coming….